Sunday, July 14, 2013

Daring Cooks: Yogurt

Wow - I haven't managed to post since April - it has been such a busy summer. Well this months Daring Cooks challenge is something I have always wanted to try - and it turns out it is very easy as well - at least it is not time consuming.

The lovely Cher of The Not So Exciting Adventures of a Dabbler was our July Daring Cooks’ hostess and she asked us to create homemade yogurt in our own kitchens! No incubators needed, no expensive equipment or ingredients, just a few items and we had delicious yogurt for a fraction of the cost and a whole lot healthier than what you buy in the stores!

You might think making yogurt is tricky to do, or that it takes a long time, or that you need to buy some fancy yogurt machine. Well it turns out none of that is true. The trickiest part or making yogurt is keeping it warm for 5-12 hours and our host gave us several ideas on how to do this. I chose to use the warming drawer in my oven and cracked it open just a bit. I put a thermometer with an alarm on it set to 120F so I would know if it got too warm but it was not an issue. The temperature barely moved all day, at least not until the warming drawer automatically shut off after 5 hours. I didn't know it did that, but I caught it fairly quickly so no disasters.

Mine was not thickening much so I did end up leaving mine warm for 12 full hours. Even after this time it was still very runny but I decided to try it out. I put it in the fridge to see if it would thicken up more in the fridge. It might have thickened a little more but it was still very thin.

I was worried the thin consistency meant that my culture was bad. I used a store-bought local brand yogurt as my culture so I wasn't really sure how it would work. Turns out the consistency was no indication of the taste. It tasted just like I would expect - nice and tangy. I actually like the runny texture - just not what I was expecting. Will definitely try this again now that I know how easy it is.